Physical activity is an essential component of maintaining a healthy lifestyle in view of the stressful demands of modern society. Many individuals often neglect a proper regimen of physical activity or exercise only sporadically, however, in favor of spending time increasing their productivity in the workplace, for example, or pursuing non-physical leisure time activities. The negative economic impact on society of a general lack of physical activity can be significant. Lack of physical activity may be blamed for increases in healthcare costs, for example, for treating weight-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and others.
Yet, even for those determined to maintain a proper exercise routine, it can be difficult or impossible to find the time necessary to undertake a structured and disciplined exercise program. Some individuals may incur the expense of hiring personal trainers, coaches, or other training professionals to develop exercise programs or provide motivation for exercising on a consistent basis. Other individuals may choose to develop and implement their own custom exercise programs, but such programs may not provide the level of rigor and discipline necessary to generate the kind of effective and sustainable results that can be derived from proper physical activity. In general, many conventional exercise tools and programs take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to physical training and exercise. This lack of customization of the physical activity in typical exercise programs is often unattractive to many participants and may serve as a disincentive to exercise. In addition, exercise tools that do not take into account or address the physiological and psychological attributes of individual participants may be ineffective or inefficient in assisting the participants with maintaining a suitable exercise regimen.
Furthermore, many conventional training programs do not sufficiently promote adherence by the trainee to a regimented exercise program. These conventional programs do not sufficiently address the need for features such as automated monitoring and adjustment of scheduled training activity, ongoing modification of the training program in view of under-training or over-training, or providing automated feedback in accordance with the level of training activity performed.
To address the foregoing problems, improved processes, programs, and/or systems are needed to more effectively and efficiently monitor, analyze and process training data associated with training activity or other physical exercise.